


Colour Theory

by elwon



Series: Exeunt'verse [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: 2nd person POV, Character Study, M/M, emotions as colours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9389840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwon/pseuds/elwon
Summary: Jason feels his emotions as colours, and in the end it always comes back to gold.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Stage Directions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9389840).

Your name is Jason Todd and you grow up on cold grey Park Row. Huddled next to your sleeping mother, you let your dull red anger distract you from your empty belly. The now deafening silence from next door (she’s gone quiet, is she okay? Or did he finally go too far?) fuels the warm red heat within you. You stare out your cracked window searching the shadows in the night for a flash of golden hope. You’ve never seen Robin (or Batman) yourself, but Mike Yang at school brought in a real batarang, shining silver, until the teacher took it away. All you want is to see a flash of that silken gold to help you keep going. 

It’s years later and you’re the one wearing bright red, deep green and heavy gold. You’re so proud to be carrying on Dick Grayson’s legacy (you ignore the little voice whispering deep in your mind that wearing that cape is not worth the loss of your mom), but when you finally meet, he’s wearing light blue and a sickly yellow smile that your gut tells you not to trust, because it can’t hide his anger at the situation. It takes you a long time to warm up to each other. You feel like you’re still searching for that gold in the night, even though you’re the one wearing it. 

More years pass and with things a mess in Gotham, you end up in Ethiopia, choking on smoke while rubble crushes your broken ribs and it all fades into… (black) 

You wake drowning in vicious acid green, sticky-wrong on your skin and screaming hatred until it drives you into raging blood red. Like the Colour-blind who can’t tell the difference between the two, you start to wonder if it was always that way or if it even matters. 

Eventually the acid green fades back to just the familiar red, but only after you’ve left a trail of death and destruction in your wake. You’re sitting on a rooftop staring at the few stars you can see through the polluted Gotham sky, feeling blue calm (or is that just emptiness?) when the black and blue of Nightwing lands behind you. You’ve met like this several times since you actively stopped waging war on Bruce. He folds down to sit next to your metallic red helmet. You make small talk, trading quips amid intel and gossip. He makes a bad joke, you make a better one, and the soft pink you feel at his smile is not unexpected, a now familiar feeling. 

You lean in and he doesn’t lean away. You lean in even closer and he doesn’t lean away. You gently brush your lips against his and the soft pink deepens to a dusky rose. He kisses back and all the colours go off like fireworks with riotous joy in your mind. 

You suddenly realise that you’re pinning him down to the rooftop and for a brief moment you worry you’re hurting him. But Dick’s clinging back just as tightly as you, and all the colours shimmer, transmuting into a warm glow. 

You’ve finally found your gold.


End file.
